brathwaite in distress
poetry workshop
This comes off an email list I'm on. Very sorry to hear of Brathwaite's troubles. He's had many.
From Jane Sprague Add Sender
Sent Tuesday, April 19, 2005 12:10 pm
To subpoetics-l@hawaii.edu
Subject Help for Poet/Teacher Kamau Brathwaite & Cow Pastor (Barbados)
this is as much as i know (from jen hofer)
> Dear All,
>
> Kamau Brathwaite is a treasure of a human being, a brilliant
> scholar and magnificent poet. He has long been battling the Barbados
> government to keep his land, Cow Pastor, in Christ Church parish, and now,
> in his 70s, it looks like he may lose it, which puts his livelihood, his
> home, and his archive of Caribbean literature and literary history at
> risk.
>
> His tone is bleak, and frightened. He's talking about burning himself
> upon the land, and is clearly asking for community support. Please write
> to
> him at kb5@nyu.edu, urge other poets and artists who care to write to him,
> and simply tell him you support him, and ask him what he needs to save his
> land, not what he's doing to save his land. He is asking for academics,
> poets, artists, to come to Cow Pastor, see what's happening there, and
> help
> him mobilize to save it. If you know artists and writers in Barbados,
> please
> contact them and urge them to help.
>
> If you can do this, do this.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Tisa
>
> ***
> In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the
> silence of our friends. -
> Martin Luther King Jr., "The Trumpet of Conscience", 1967
>
>
>>>
>>>>> INFO: kamau brathwaite and cowpastor
>>>>> ======================================
>>>>>
>>>
>>> Please circulate as wade as possible - let it wide in the water Kamau
>>> Brathwaite kb5@nyu.edu +
>>> CowPastor, Wilcox Lands, Christ Church, Barbados see also Hambone 17
>>> (2004),
>>> 126-173
>>>
>>> 15 Mar 05/(!!) The Ides of March (!!)/CP 2:43am
>>>
>>> The lass days of KB and CowPastor Vandal: My Emmerton 2005
>>>
>>> Dear Andrea Nation and all Caribbean artists intellectuals cultural
>>> workers &
>>> environmentalists w/in the sound of Marina
>>>
>>> I sharing a letter i juss write to a wo at OUP
>>> deals w/permissions payments to authors who want to quote yr work etc.
>>> This
>>> wo and me - we don't kno each other - share a wonderful sense of weather
>>> and
>>> the environment and at the end of my business w/her this midnight, I
>>> describe
>>> and refer to (un)developments in my life i thot you shd kno
>>>
>>> w/the dust choking me from the destruction so that I can hardly eat -
>>> the
>>> water that we drink returning to like its limestone white residual - and
>>> have
>>> these DS(3s) and Beverley has already had to go the doc w/a dreadful
>>> cough of
>>> corridor -
>>>
>>> I've tried - in vain - to get an appointment w/the PS of the Housing &
>>> Lands
>>> - a man i long respec & kno. . . and a letter of premonition &
>>> desperation I
>>> senn in to yr NATION tho promise publication. . . has nvr in fact
>>> appeared. .
>>> . I try contact Liz Thompson who when she was in NYC sometime ago at an
>>> X/hibition of BaJam Wo artists, at which we share both spoke, said yes i
>>> shd
>>> send her the details of my evident concern. Nuffen of course followed
>>> from
>>> that. . . I tried lifelines to Dame Billie and Mia - nuffen there
>>> neetha. And
>>> I note that whenever you respond to me on this, you ask a whole series
>>> of Qs
>>> about 'what am I doing' - as if I doin nothin!!
>>>
>>> All I can in the end do - w/out community support - is set afire to
>>> myself,
>>> as I've said before, on this very namsetoura pasture become the
>>> criminal. and
>>> I don't really want to do dat, because my spirit flies so high - so many
>>> dreamstories and ideas seem to flow & flow - altho of course who's to
>>> kno if
>>> they gods not punishing mwe But I don't think so, or lets say I arrogant
>>> enuff to think that I don't think so - which of course is whe the danger
>>> lies. . .
>>>
>>> I write to you now as I write earlier to that stranger. but w/the
>>> difference
>>> that I have faith that as a wo of soul, there is something I sure you
>>> can do,
>>> if is nothing more than persuade one of yr colleagues who's still free
>>> and
>>> fearless - is there any such? - to come out to CP and see whats
>>> happening. .
>>> . is there no voices in BaJam that can raise can rise? It will be a
>>> shame if
>>> i hear people saying AFTER I GONE - that Kamau use to talk about these
>>> things
>>> and no one lissen not a soul do a ting. trapped - SURELY NOT FOR EVER -
>>> in
>>> our Mental Slavery
>>>
>>> The plight of one person. the flight of one sparrow . is worth more than
>>> all
>>> the kingdooms of this world. But very frew people can live this
>>>
>>> What I saying is that my micro case here, is the macro case of us all.
>>> The
>>> little done unto mwe, is the burden down upon us all upon us all
>>>
>>> All night long, the trucks trundle & boom. Two mornings ago, to destroy
>>> more
>>> duncks trees, so they cd swathe more space for the tractors, they set
>>> fire to
>>> the slope under Thyme Bottom. if the Fire Beegrade didn't come, that
>>> fire
>>> might have swept down into our yard and run all the way down west to
>>> Parish
>>> Lands. It was a clear day and a high wind
>>>
>>> The destruction of CowPasture to put in an unnecessary and unethical
>>> road -
>>> when there are two perfectly good xisting road in this quadrant - for
>>> some
>>> new unxplained access to the airport, involves -
>>>
>>> (1) the death of the three dozen cows and flocks of blackbelly sheep
>>> that
>>> use to ruminate CowPasture
>>>
>>> (2) the loss of rumination marks the end of peace & serengetti beauty
>>> here
>>> and marks the arrival of vandalism. Abandoned houses further pillage,
>>> and
>>> w/the blood up, even the duncks trees on the pasture under pressure -
>>> their
>>> limbs & branches torn down this harmattan for their plunder, not picked
>>> picked picked between the thorns, as happily traditional
>>>
>>> (3) the loss of pasture - here and all over Barbados and all over the
>>> CARICOM Caribbean = also the closing down of the last sugar production
>>> in St
>>> Kitts, and the verge of ditto in Barabados
>>>
>>> (4) the loss of pasture - here and all over the island and all over
>>> the
>>> CARICOM Caribbean = the decline of cricket. Sir Viv and Gary S come from
>>> BayLands not from roundabouts, hotels and clogged up death-mark highways
>>>
>>> (5) the road here is unethical because of this and because it is an
>>> offence
>>> not only to the people who choose to live here, who are/were so
>>> fortunate to
>>> live here to love here - and dispossessed of pristine coral; thru no
>>> fault of
>>> their own, but via a willful remote control decision by Authorities too
>>> arrogant & high & mighty to discuss plans that involve all our futures
>>> fortunes w/us 'out here', who are still seen - MENTAL PLANTATION MENTAL
>>> SLAVERY - as chattel anti-heroes have no voice - cannot afford to be
>>> admitted
>>> to out voice
>>>
>>> (6) even as I write this, therefore, destruction going on - this old
>>> plantation well, the little Lake (or Pond) of Thorns - the natural
>>> water
>>> catchment for this area - filled in and flattened - hence future floods.
>>> And
>>> near the well, a fledgling BEARDED FIG-TREE (shrine of ancient African &
>>> Amerindian spirits) its cinnamon beards just showing. a dear endangered
>>> species. cruelly unethically soon to gone . i cd go on an gone . like
>>> all
>>> the people of Thyme Bottom already gone gone gone. . .
>>>
>>> (7) at 3 pm today, tractors break thru the last line of bush & duncks
>>> between them and our house my yard. A noise as of bombing and a great
>>> cloud
>>> of dust - FALOUJA - and now there's nothing left between ourselves and
>>> them -
>>> the slave well nxt, the bearded fig- tree nxt - today if not tomorrow.
>>> My
>>> eyes are full of grit and helpless scars, as if I am the last person in
>>> the
>>> world the lost poet, really, in the world. Rosina say this morning I shd
>>> write it down. But write it down for who for what. . .
>>>
>>> I walked out there towards the cloud of dust - the grit - my tears - and
>>> my
>>> heart as if rebelled inside me, fit to burst w/grief & loss &
>>> helplessness &
>>> pain
>>>
>>> (8) I had also hoped, when we found this place, to found my nation
>>> here -
>>> my maroon town, resistance palenque. Bring in my archives from their
>>> shattered world - shattered in Jamaica since the Gilbert Hurricane of
>>> 1988 -
>>> an archive stretching back now almost 100 years and covering from Bay
>>> Street/Browns Beach/Harrson College days, thru Cambridge, Ghana, SL, 30
>>> years
>>> at Mona, the Caribbean Artists Movement (London), Bim, BBC Caribbean
>>> Voices,
>>> Savacou, Carifestas, paintings, sculpture (inc early postcolonial W Af,
>>> early
>>> Rastafari), Colly, Timmy Callender, Broodhagen, jazz records, tape
>>> recordings
>>> from almost ancient Ghana, from nearly every Caribbean voice of say or
>>> song
>>>
>>> and all this a lament - the loss & dislocation of so much of this in
>>> Gilbert
>>> (see SHAR. see Carolivia Herron's 'SAVING THE WORD' hear ARK - these
>>> are our
>>> documents for our last our lost millennium - and still more loss from
>>> worm
>>> and Ivan (2004) and a terrible break-in (5 March 05) - VANDALL INVASION
>>> of
>>> our hopes and consciousness
>>>
>>> (9) The dream the vision was to in-gather the scatta archives (Ja & NYC)
>>> here, try heal them and from this wound of miracle, set up a BUSSA
>>> CENTRE for
>>> us all - enough peace & space & beauty surpassing any other in the
>>> world - in
>>> a small sacred bless - to build a place to live to love, a place for the
>>> LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA, a conference room, performance outdoor places,
>>> chalets
>>> for writers, artists - that kind of possible dream - because we had the
>>> dream
>>> we had the space we had the means - destroyed by my own Govt - w/out
>>> DISCUSSION - and digging us down and STRANGLING the holy past &
>>> constellation
>>> flute & future of this place - the egrets gone because the cattle gone.
>>> the
>>> woo doves mourn. I itch from deconstruction cement dust
>>>
>>> I cannot even die here now. no strength to even burn myself upon this
>>> pasture
>>> as I want to do. As I still may. Because my love, whe else is there to
>>> go, to
>>> try to build again at 75? tho I not beggin for your sympathy - tho that
>>> good
>>> too - I askin you to LISSEN . one mo Emmerton. xcep unlike the Mighty
>>> Gabby
>>> song which sing & say far more than any prose I prose can say, me na
>>> give up.
>>> me nvva will accept unrighteousness, If this was SandlyLane wd we be
>>> treated
>>> so? again today the tractors wheel an thump. I can't accept to so
>>> unfairly go
>>>
>>>
>>> p/s I'm being told that all this is too late - that time & the tide has
>>> pass
>>> me by - not enuff effort too late! if that be so, let me then at least
>>> hope
>>> that you will allow at least my faint words - faintly heard now on the
>>> pasture - be at least a verbal memorial to mark the graveyard of this
>>> place
>
>
>
This comes off an email list I'm on. Very sorry to hear of Brathwaite's troubles. He's had many.
From Jane Sprague
Sent Tuesday, April 19, 2005 12:10 pm
To subpoetics-l@hawaii.edu
Subject Help for Poet/Teacher Kamau Brathwaite & Cow Pastor (Barbados)
this is as much as i know (from jen hofer)
> Dear All,
>
> Kamau Brathwaite is a treasure of a human being, a brilliant
> scholar and magnificent poet. He has long been battling the Barbados
> government to keep his land, Cow Pastor, in Christ Church parish, and now,
> in his 70s, it looks like he may lose it, which puts his livelihood, his
> home, and his archive of Caribbean literature and literary history at
> risk.
>
> His tone is bleak, and frightened. He's talking about burning himself
> upon the land, and is clearly asking for community support. Please write
> to
> him at kb5@nyu.edu, urge other poets and artists who care to write to him,
> and simply tell him you support him, and ask him what he needs to save his
> land, not what he's doing to save his land. He is asking for academics,
> poets, artists, to come to Cow Pastor, see what's happening there, and
> help
> him mobilize to save it. If you know artists and writers in Barbados,
> please
> contact them and urge them to help.
>
> If you can do this, do this.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Tisa
>
> ***
> In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the
> silence of our friends. -
> Martin Luther King Jr., "The Trumpet of Conscience", 1967
>
>
>>>
>>>>> INFO: kamau brathwaite and cowpastor
>>>>> ======================================
>>>>>
>>>
>>> Please circulate as wade as possible - let it wide in the water Kamau
>>> Brathwaite kb5@nyu.edu
>>> CowPastor, Wilcox Lands, Christ Church, Barbados see also Hambone 17
>>> (2004),
>>> 126-173
>>>
>>> 15 Mar 05/(!!) The Ides of March (!!)/CP 2:43am
>>>
>>> The lass days of KB and CowPastor Vandal: My Emmerton 2005
>>>
>>> Dear Andrea Nation and all Caribbean artists intellectuals cultural
>>> workers &
>>> environmentalists w/in the sound of Marina
>>>
>>> I sharing a letter i juss write to a wo at OUP
>>> deals w/permissions payments to authors who want to quote yr work etc.
>>> This
>>> wo and me - we don't kno each other - share a wonderful sense of weather
>>> and
>>> the environment and at the end of my business w/her this midnight, I
>>> describe
>>> and refer to (un)developments in my life i thot you shd kno
>>>
>>> w/the dust choking me from the destruction so that I can hardly eat -
>>> the
>>> water that we drink returning to like its limestone white residual - and
>>> have
>>> these DS(3s) and Beverley has already had to go the doc w/a dreadful
>>> cough of
>>> corridor -
>>>
>>> I've tried - in vain - to get an appointment w/the PS of the Housing &
>>> Lands
>>> - a man i long respec & kno. . . and a letter of premonition &
>>> desperation I
>>> senn in to yr NATION tho promise publication. . . has nvr in fact
>>> appeared. .
>>> . I try contact Liz Thompson who when she was in NYC sometime ago at an
>>> X/hibition of BaJam Wo artists, at which we share both spoke, said yes i
>>> shd
>>> send her the details of my evident concern. Nuffen of course followed
>>> from
>>> that. . . I tried lifelines to Dame Billie and Mia - nuffen there
>>> neetha. And
>>> I note that whenever you respond to me on this, you ask a whole series
>>> of Qs
>>> about 'what am I doing' - as if I doin nothin!!
>>>
>>> All I can in the end do - w/out community support - is set afire to
>>> myself,
>>> as I've said before, on this very namsetoura pasture become the
>>> criminal. and
>>> I don't really want to do dat, because my spirit flies so high - so many
>>> dreamstories and ideas seem to flow & flow - altho of course who's to
>>> kno if
>>> they gods not punishing mwe But I don't think so, or lets say I arrogant
>>> enuff to think that I don't think so - which of course is whe the danger
>>> lies. . .
>>>
>>> I write to you now as I write earlier to that stranger. but w/the
>>> difference
>>> that I have faith that as a wo of soul, there is something I sure you
>>> can do,
>>> if is nothing more than persuade one of yr colleagues who's still free
>>> and
>>> fearless - is there any such? - to come out to CP and see whats
>>> happening. .
>>> . is there no voices in BaJam that can raise can rise? It will be a
>>> shame if
>>> i hear people saying AFTER I GONE - that Kamau use to talk about these
>>> things
>>> and no one lissen not a soul do a ting. trapped - SURELY NOT FOR EVER -
>>> in
>>> our Mental Slavery
>>>
>>> The plight of one person. the flight of one sparrow . is worth more than
>>> all
>>> the kingdooms of this world. But very frew people can live this
>>>
>>> What I saying is that my micro case here, is the macro case of us all.
>>> The
>>> little done unto mwe, is the burden down upon us all upon us all
>>>
>>> All night long, the trucks trundle & boom. Two mornings ago, to destroy
>>> more
>>> duncks trees, so they cd swathe more space for the tractors, they set
>>> fire to
>>> the slope under Thyme Bottom. if the Fire Beegrade didn't come, that
>>> fire
>>> might have swept down into our yard and run all the way down west to
>>> Parish
>>> Lands. It was a clear day and a high wind
>>>
>>> The destruction of CowPasture to put in an unnecessary and unethical
>>> road -
>>> when there are two perfectly good xisting road in this quadrant - for
>>> some
>>> new unxplained access to the airport, involves -
>>>
>>> (1) the death of the three dozen cows and flocks of blackbelly sheep
>>> that
>>> use to ruminate CowPasture
>>>
>>> (2) the loss of rumination marks the end of peace & serengetti beauty
>>> here
>>> and marks the arrival of vandalism. Abandoned houses further pillage,
>>> and
>>> w/the blood up, even the duncks trees on the pasture under pressure -
>>> their
>>> limbs & branches torn down this harmattan for their plunder, not picked
>>> picked picked between the thorns, as happily traditional
>>>
>>> (3) the loss of pasture - here and all over Barbados and all over the
>>> CARICOM Caribbean = also the closing down of the last sugar production
>>> in St
>>> Kitts, and the verge of ditto in Barabados
>>>
>>> (4) the loss of pasture - here and all over the island and all over
>>> the
>>> CARICOM Caribbean = the decline of cricket. Sir Viv and Gary S come from
>>> BayLands not from roundabouts, hotels and clogged up death-mark highways
>>>
>>> (5) the road here is unethical because of this and because it is an
>>> offence
>>> not only to the people who choose to live here, who are/were so
>>> fortunate to
>>> live here to love here - and dispossessed of pristine coral; thru no
>>> fault of
>>> their own, but via a willful remote control decision by Authorities too
>>> arrogant & high & mighty to discuss plans that involve all our futures
>>> fortunes w/us 'out here', who are still seen - MENTAL PLANTATION MENTAL
>>> SLAVERY - as chattel anti-heroes have no voice - cannot afford to be
>>> admitted
>>> to out voice
>>>
>>> (6) even as I write this, therefore, destruction going on - this old
>>> plantation well, the little Lake (or Pond) of Thorns - the natural
>>> water
>>> catchment for this area - filled in and flattened - hence future floods.
>>> And
>>> near the well, a fledgling BEARDED FIG-TREE (shrine of ancient African &
>>> Amerindian spirits) its cinnamon beards just showing. a dear endangered
>>> species. cruelly unethically soon to gone . i cd go on an gone . like
>>> all
>>> the people of Thyme Bottom already gone gone gone. . .
>>>
>>> (7) at 3 pm today, tractors break thru the last line of bush & duncks
>>> between them and our house my yard. A noise as of bombing and a great
>>> cloud
>>> of dust - FALOUJA - and now there's nothing left between ourselves and
>>> them -
>>> the slave well nxt, the bearded fig- tree nxt - today if not tomorrow.
>>> My
>>> eyes are full of grit and helpless scars, as if I am the last person in
>>> the
>>> world the lost poet, really, in the world. Rosina say this morning I shd
>>> write it down. But write it down for who for what. . .
>>>
>>> I walked out there towards the cloud of dust - the grit - my tears - and
>>> my
>>> heart as if rebelled inside me, fit to burst w/grief & loss &
>>> helplessness &
>>> pain
>>>
>>> (8) I had also hoped, when we found this place, to found my nation
>>> here -
>>> my maroon town, resistance palenque. Bring in my archives from their
>>> shattered world - shattered in Jamaica since the Gilbert Hurricane of
>>> 1988 -
>>> an archive stretching back now almost 100 years and covering from Bay
>>> Street/Browns Beach/Harrson College days, thru Cambridge, Ghana, SL, 30
>>> years
>>> at Mona, the Caribbean Artists Movement (London), Bim, BBC Caribbean
>>> Voices,
>>> Savacou, Carifestas, paintings, sculpture (inc early postcolonial W Af,
>>> early
>>> Rastafari), Colly, Timmy Callender, Broodhagen, jazz records, tape
>>> recordings
>>> from almost ancient Ghana, from nearly every Caribbean voice of say or
>>> song
>>>
>>> and all this a lament - the loss & dislocation of so much of this in
>>> Gilbert
>>> (see SHAR. see Carolivia Herron's 'SAVING THE WORD' hear ARK - these
>>> are our
>>> documents for our last our lost millennium - and still more loss from
>>> worm
>>> and Ivan (2004) and a terrible break-in (5 March 05) - VANDALL INVASION
>>> of
>>> our hopes and consciousness
>>>
>>> (9) The dream the vision was to in-gather the scatta archives (Ja & NYC)
>>> here, try heal them and from this wound of miracle, set up a BUSSA
>>> CENTRE for
>>> us all - enough peace & space & beauty surpassing any other in the
>>> world - in
>>> a small sacred bless - to build a place to live to love, a place for the
>>> LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA, a conference room, performance outdoor places,
>>> chalets
>>> for writers, artists - that kind of possible dream - because we had the
>>> dream
>>> we had the space we had the means - destroyed by my own Govt - w/out
>>> DISCUSSION - and digging us down and STRANGLING the holy past &
>>> constellation
>>> flute & future of this place - the egrets gone because the cattle gone.
>>> the
>>> woo doves mourn. I itch from deconstruction cement dust
>>>
>>> I cannot even die here now. no strength to even burn myself upon this
>>> pasture
>>> as I want to do. As I still may. Because my love, whe else is there to
>>> go, to
>>> try to build again at 75? tho I not beggin for your sympathy - tho that
>>> good
>>> too - I askin you to LISSEN . one mo Emmerton. xcep unlike the Mighty
>>> Gabby
>>> song which sing & say far more than any prose I prose can say, me na
>>> give up.
>>> me nvva will accept unrighteousness, If this was SandlyLane wd we be
>>> treated
>>> so? again today the tractors wheel an thump. I can't accept to so
>>> unfairly go
>>>
>>>
>>> p/s I'm being told that all this is too late - that time & the tide has
>>> pass
>>> me by - not enuff effort too late! if that be so, let me then at least
>>> hope
>>> that you will allow at least my faint words - faintly heard now on the
>>> pasture - be at least a verbal memorial to mark the graveyard of this
>>> place
>
>
>
posted by susan at 3:25 PM
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